November 30, 2011

It’s been a wonderful experience! Sometimes exhilarating, sometimes as if it would completely suck the energy out of you. But in the end, it was worth it and I intend to do it again next year.

As one pep talk suggested, it’s not necessarily about finishing a novel but to find out what the tools are that are in store for you. I didn’t finish my project but I managed to set up a routine that I don’t think I will abandon right away. If this month has taught me something at all, then that I can bring myself to work continuously on a story… Every day a few hundred words will suffice. And it’s something constructive. So, although I reached the official word count (and more: it’s 62k words so far) the story is not finished and I will keep working on that these next few days.

It’s been a blast. Thanks to all my writing buddies and supporters throughout the month.

November 22, 2011

Day 8-20:
Oh, it’s been busy here. Honestly, there were a few days when I thought “Pxasìk” (if you get my drift ;) ) and wanted to just let it be. But when I got to 40 thousand I thought “this is the home stretch, I cannot give up now!” When I reached 48 thousand on the 17th day I thought “I would be a fool to give up now”.

But the inner batteries thought otherwise. I just had to recharge, it seems. Two days I couldn’t bring myself to write anything. Constantly with the voice in the back of my mind that said “You’d be a fool to give up now”.

So, on 20 November, I finally reached the 50 thousand word mark (yay for me!) in an excessive non-stop writing marathon. The story is far from finished but I can go about it from a more relaxed angle, I think.

Inspiration, you can knock on my door anytime. Let’s grab a cup of coffee!

Lesson of the days: a few thousand words a day keeps the failure away.

November 8, 2011

Day 3–7:
Miscellaneous questions: Why is it always so hard to begin? Why do I always get into the flow when it’s time to go to bed (because I have to get up in less then 7 hours)? Why do I feel tired when I begin but so awake when I want to go to sleep?

The first week of NaNoWriMo is done and I have to say, it’s going great. There were days when it was harder to get myself to start writing. But in the end I always managed. And I was always proud of the result.

Saturday was good, I wrote till 2 in the morning. I stopped, though, on Sunday to finally finish up that novella I was working on. Die Ankunft der Störche (Arrival of the Storks) is finally finished in its rough draft. Now, I’ll let it simmer and see how it turns out when I’ll check on it again for the revision…

One of my experience is an odd one, though, which I want to share here because I myself was surprised to realise it: Before I started, I was always convinced that the insight into other users’ word counts would be an inspiring thing. Something to ‘pressure’ you on, if you will, to achieve even more than you thought possible of yourself. A competition of sorts. Checking up on a few avid NaNos, however, during the first few days, I noticed that I got frustrated to see how far they’d already gotten, while I was still in my odd hundreds words.
But after a while (and with the help of my sister) I realised that this is not important as long as I concentrate on myself and what I’m doing. In Na’vi there’s this great new word fmokx which is jealousy or envy without the negative connotation. So: furia fo pamrel si fìtxan, ke leiu oeru kea fmokx ;) meaning, ‘I’m not jealous that others write so much.’ Good writing to all of you!

Also, I want to thank Blue Elf for his encouraging comment. Irayo ngaru nìtxan, ma tsmuk. Yes, you’re right. It is a little mad and if you don’t like to compose a story creatively on demand then it will be even harder. But I tell you, the outcome is so rewarding! The realisation—once you look back on the words and the amount of pages that you have already written—that all that was created by yourself is so amazing!

– Which leads to the ultimate question. The one that should decide it all for you, if you do care to admit it to yourself, whether you really want to do it or need to do it: After all the stress, forcing yourself to the desk and in front of that computer to punch in those words for the daily count—why does it still feel so good?!

There is no correct or incorrect answer (well, if you feel good at all, that is) because that is a question you need to answer yourselves…

Lesson of the day: (brought to you by my sister) do your thing, do it well and everything is fine.

November 2, 2011

Day 2:
Whoa, this was a pretty close call… Not that it was very difficult today (well, you know, apart from the fact that you could concentrate on writing but instead you let yourself procrastinate wherever and with whatever you can…) but I was writing up until the last minute to update my word count.

It’s going pretty good. Yesterday, I had the first major shock when my trusted writing software seemed to have been overwhelmed by all the attention it got. So, it decided to shut down for a while … without asking. Maybe a sign of ‘burn out’ … the new illness in fashion these days. But it works again … faithful as ever and sucked in the nearly 3.000 words as fast as I could type them.

Lesson of the day: if you cause your writing software to crash, you’re definitely on the right track.

Day 1 (Tag 1):
This morning I thought, this is not going to be a good start because I had a dizzy feeling whenever I sat in front of the computer—I’m still trying to fight off a cold… Also, I still try to finish a novella that I’ve been working on since June. So, the odd 1100 words that I wrote for that don’t count, unfortunately, but the novella is coming to an end. Which is a good thing.

So, I got to writing on my project for WriMo as late as 7pm. But I did it. I took the advice of a WriMo-Pro, Paul, and started with a scene that has been very vivid in my mind since I first started to think about the idea. A slow start … getting into the mood and feel of the story that is, but totally okay. The outcome is rewarding. A bit more than 2000 words. I don’t want to jinx it but I think that’s a good start. Now, I need sugar … have to buy something tomorrow, otherwise I will not get through this…